


The Man with Time in his Eyes

by Poetry



Series: Legacy [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alien Planet, Angst, Dark, Future Fic, Gen, Mystery, POV Original Character, Plotty, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mereisekarait, a medical student from the planet Emmeras and a former companion, meets a man with time in his eyes, a look she finds deeply familiar. He doesn't recognize her. Can they solve a mystery and untangle their timelines?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Visitation

Karait chewed on the fingernail of the sixth finger of her right hand as she waited for the next client, who was due to arrive any minute now, according to the notification window on her computer screen. She was composing a message for her cousin. _What preening egotist with a few thousand credits to burn will it be today? A foreman's rich daughter convinced her ears just aren't curly enough? A retired merchant insecure about his tail length? I'm not studying medicine for this. Raskoth knows I'm going for psychiatry, but he assigns me to a post with a cosmeticist. That tosser had it in for me the moment I -_

The client was here. She could see through the transparent office door. Karait saved the message to finish later. She could tell from a distance that the client was human from the dark goggles. The rays of the Emmer sun were damaging to human retinas, so they wore special goggles outside at all times. As the human came in through the door, she could see that he was male, very muscular, with long dark hair graying ever so slightly at the temples. She couldn't help but wonder what such a handsome man wanted to go under the laser for. Wasn't it always the way? Karait could never see the flaws that her clients thought needed correcting. Even by the standards of her boss' clientele, though, this one was odd. Despite the autumn heat, he wore a long, dark coat that billowed rather impressively about him, and large fur-lined boots. Karait knew for a fact that humans were no less sensitive to heat than her own species.

"I'm not here for an enhancement, Miss..." said the client, reading the name on her coat. "Mereisekarait." He smirked, as if he knew that she had been pondering that very subject.

Karait arranged her face into an expression of blank courtesy. "Then how may I help you, sir?" She couldn't keep her tip of her tail from curling and uncurling with curiosity. Couldn't the man take off his goggles? He would be so much easier to read if she could see his eyes. Karait had had human patients before; she knew how they expressed themselves. This one, however, refused to conform to her expectations.

"I'm here to inquire about a client who had an enhancement done here five days ago." Karait felt her stomachs plunge. _Please don't ask about the Ataraxi, anything but that..._ "He would have been half again my height on his hind feet, lavender skin, long whiskers - " He mimed the length of the whiskers with his hands. " - and I'd say he was from Atarax, probably, though you find that species on the outer planets of the system too, sometimes."

"I - I - I -" Karait's tail was lashing to and fro, entirely gone from her control now. She felt her stomachs grow icy. "I can't talk to you about that, sir. It's too - you wouldn't want to get involved in that. It'd be a violation of the terms of my contract to go into any details anyway. You should ask someone else." The man sighed, almost imperceptibly, then removed his goggles. His eyes were blue and fathomless, like the Twin Lakes of Soshone. No, they were utterly unlike those lakes. Their blue was the color of Time.

Karait had once known a man with eyes like that.

"Please, Miss Mereisekarait. I'm not asking you to violate medical confidentiality. You know that this client was different. You're right. He's dangerous. Your boss won't listen to you, but I will. I've seen a medical student save a planet." The man looked unimaginably old as he spoke, but it was the kind of advanced age that was tempered with an even older kindness.

He didn't seem to recognize Karait, but she didn't care. She knew how time could tie itself in knots around this man. "All right," she smiled, stepping out from behind her desk. "I trust you. Just call me Karait, please."

"And you can call me the Doctor." He offered his hand to shake.

Karait took his strong, callused hand in her delicate, many-fingered one. "I know."


	2. An Unearthly Child

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "It's...complicated. Non-linear time - you'd know better than I can explain," said Karait, coiling and uncoiling her tail. She let go of his hand. It wasn't the same as the hand of the Doctor she'd known. It was much thicker and coarser. But it was him. It was really him.

"Right," he said, barely missing a beat. "The way I see it, saves us all the time and trouble of getting introduced. Just don't tell me anything I shouldn't know, and we'll be fine." He flashed a smile. "I hope we parted on good terms, at least."

"That's really not something you should know," said Karait, avoiding eye contact. "Timelines, you know."

"Moving right along," said the Doctor quickly, "how about that Ataraxi? Why do you have such a bad feeling about him, and what have you been doing about it? No friend of mine worth her salt would let that go." He gave her a wink, and the old feelings of camaraderie came tumbling back. Karait restrained herself. The circumstances were entirely different from last time.

"I'm not really your friend. The friends who traveled with you in the TARDIS, I met them. I wasn't that close with you, not like they were. You just..." Karait pondered how to explain the situation without muddying the timestreams. "...consulted me from time to time. You'd pop in for a visit, ask me what you needed to know, thanked me, and went off to save the world." At the Doctor's look, she stopped. "Er, yeah. I don't know you that well, Doctor, just well enough to know that I can trust you. But you're right. I've been investigating Karo Sair's medical records. But I can't tell you about them, Doctor. I took an oath."

"Don't break your oath, then. Just tell me what made you suspicious in the first place." He took out his sonic screwdriver and pointed at the office door. Karait smiled fondly at the sight of it. "There. We won't be interrupted."

"I'm quite familiar with Ataraxi biology, Doctor. Karo Sair is a child. We usually only get children here for sexual reassignment surgery or reconstruction of a damaged face or other medically necessary procedures. But he wasn't here for that kind of procedure. It was an enhancement, and a strange one at that. And..." Karait swallowed hard, then spoke in a whisper. "...he didn't act like a child. I'm going for psychiatry, Doctor. I've seen children who behave very strangely, but I've never met one like him. He was like an adult in a child's body. He was coarse and foul and he looked at me with a child's eyes but it was one of those looks where you can tell he's picturing you naked." Her teal skin flushed an ugly olive green.

The Doctor touched her very lightly on the top of her head for reassurance (for according to Emmer custom only family was allowed to touch each other on the shoulder.) "Karait, I'm over 5000 years old, and look at me. How do you know?" Her jaw clenched. "I believe you," he added quickly. "Don't worry. I'm just trying to get to the root of this. I'm working on suspicions too, and suspicions are important. I just want to check the evidence behind our hunches."

"The medical records confirm that he's a child. If I tested your genetic material, it would show evidence of your age, from mutations accumulated over time. I tested his DNA myself. He has to be a child. But he isn't." She sighed and leaned back against her desk.

The Doctor laced his hands under his chin and pondered. "Well, it can't be from regeneration. The only two species in the universe known to do that are the Time Lords and the Minyans, and Minyos was destroyed in the Time War. Could it have been a psychograft?"

Karait gasped. "A psychograft? You mean mind swapping? That's illegal on Emmeras! That's illegal everywhere!"

"As it should be," the Doctor muttered, still deep in thought. Abruptly, he piped up: "A child can't have a medical procedure done without parental permission. Did he have the proper documentation?"

"He had the right form. It passed all our scans, anyway, but it could have been a clever forgery."

"Well, since I can't ask you to access his medical records, I'll go to the Census Office and find out who Karo Sair's parents are. Then we can ask if he's gone through a drastic personality change lately. When do you finish work?" The Doctor was already using his sonic screwdriver to open the door.

"Doctor - " blurted Karait. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help. The medical records could really help you solve this."

The Doctor turned around in a swirl of his coat. "Don't be sorry, Karait. You're doing what a doctor should."

Coming from the Doctor, Karait wasn't sure what to make of that, but she only said, "I'll meet you at the TARDIS at quarter-day. Where's it parked?" Her face was all studied nonchalance, but she couldn't keep her tail from twitching with excitement. The previous Doctor she'd known had mentioned the TARDIS with fondness, but Karait had never been inside.

"She's in Grand Meadows, next to the silver hedgerow." He was already halfway out the door.

"You parked the TARDIS next to the prince's prize hedges?!" spluttered Karait at the Doctor's retreating figure. "Oh, never mind. You're incorrigible no matter how many times you've regenerated." She returned to her desk. There was a message waiting from her cousin. _How goes it at the office of Heirodrannon the Face-Smoosher? Had any spoiled heiresses in to get their noses done? _

A smile stole across Karait's tapered face. She input a reply. _No, not today. It's been quite alright. Caught up with an old friend..._


	3. Dimensions in Time

The Doctor had mentioned that the TARDIS looked like a blue box, but that description didn't quite prepare Karait for what she encountered in Grand Meadows. She was otherworldly, outlined in dark blue against the blazing silver of the hedges. "Public police box?" she muttered.

The TARDIS door opened, and the Doctor poked out his goggle-clad head. "Are you going to stand there and gawk all day or come in?" he said good-naturedly.

"Doctor, why - " But he had already disappeared back inside. She squinted at the writing on the box. It was clearly written in an alien alphabet, yet it still resolved itself into words. It was an indescribable sensation. The door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open and stepped in.

The first thought that flitted through her stupefied brain was _I can see why she's next to the prince's hedges_. The walls were smooth and silver-lit, entirely unlike metal and much more like the leaves of the hedgerows, though her light outshone them. Shimmering white struts like water-trees branched and twined around the console. It had to be an illusion, this sense of space, this appearance of being much vaster than a blue box. Karait exhaled a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, then turned and bolted.

Karait found herself, a moment later, face down in the sweet yellow grass, inhaling its scent desperately. It occurred to her that she was sobbing, a little. She could sense the Doctor standing over her. "I love Emmeras, Doctor," she said through a faceful of grass. "It's everything I've ever known. I didn't think I'd miss it after just a moment so apart from it."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" said the Doctor quietly. "There are ways you can help without traveling in the TARDIS. You've done that for me before, in your timeline."

"I don't deserve this," mumbled Karait into the grass. "You're too kind to me, Doctor. I'm useless. I can't go in there. There's this feeling I get, a hum that rattles my bones..."

She felt the Doctor pulling her upright by her elbows. From her seated position, she looked up into his goggled eyes. The layer of intervening dark plasglass made the eye contact less painful. "You're not useless. You love your home. I understand." Even through the goggles, Karait could see the flash of pain in the Doctor's face at the word "home." It only served to make her more upset. "I'll go visit Atarax and talk to Karo Sair's parents, if they are his parents. I'll be back in a second. She travels in time, remember?" He gave a fake smile, which she returned.

He brushed the top of her head briefly, then disappeared into the TARDIS. The raspy sound of dematerialization made Karait feel vaguely ill. Before she had time to recover, the sound redoubled as the TARDIS reappeared a moment later. The Doctor marched out of the TARDIS, coat billowing, his mouth set in a hard line. "The so-called parents are childless, and their memories haven't been altered. I've done enough memory-altering to know it when I see it. All his records are faked." He paced around the TARDIS. "It could still be a psychograft. He could be in the body of a kidnapped child." More fretful pacing. "Karait, have you cleaned the clothes you were wearing when he came in?"

Karait gave a hollow laugh. "I haven't had time. There's a sonic laundromat on the ground floor of my building, but I work the night shift at the royal hospital this week. Up until now, I've only had time to eat and sleep between shifts."

The Doctor stopped pacing. "Perfect. There'll be traces of his DNA on your clothes. I can use my instruments in the TARDIS to check his DNA against Ataraxi genetic databases and see if there's a match. Then we can return the poor kid to his family and deal with whoever's taken his body."

"Before I get my clothes," said Karait, drawing herself to her feet, "what made you suspicious about Karo Sair? What brought you here?"

"The TARDIS can sense anachronisms. In the wrong hands, temporarily displaced technology can be very dangerous." More to himself than to Karait, he muttered, "Just look at the Time Agency. Pack of meddling morons...anyway, I tracked the disturbance to Karo Sair. The TARDIS can sense anachronisms, so I took a bit of her with me." From inside his coat he took a lustrous white flake, which looked like one of the struts inside the TARDIS. "Seemed a bit off for a child to own temporally volatile contraband. It wasn't in his hostel room, though. If it's a psychograft I'll toss it into the Vortex." He paused to put away the piece of TARDIS, and saw Karait's distress. "Are you all right, sweetheart?" He took a step closer and stroked the crown of her head.

With that caring gesture, Karait lost all composure. The gray tears running down her green-flushed cheeks made her face look dark and blotchy as swamp mud. "You're so different from the Doctor I knew," she gasped between sobs. She felt the Doctor's hand fall away from her hair. Watching him through her swimmy vision, she could see the raw pain that exuded from every pore of him, more pain than she'd ever experienced in her life. Why was he so upset? "I'm not saying I'm disappointed in you or anything," she sniveled amid fresh tears. "You don't understand. I've met you, but you've never met me before, and you trust me. I don't deserve that."

"You must not have known me very well, if that's what you think," said the Doctor fiercely. "You care about helping this kid. You're going to make a great doctor. You deserve to be trusted."

"I'm afraid, Doctor." _Afraid I can't live up to all you expect of me_, she thought. _If you knew..._ She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and saluted in the Emmer style, with a flourish of her tail. "I'll be back in a bit." She turned and dashed out of the park.


	4. Partners in Crime

Karait was leaning against a smooth white rock near the TARDIS, eyes closed, listening to the music streaming from her aural implants as she waited for the Doctor to finish his tests on Karo Sair's DNA. The sound of his heavy footfalls and his coat snapping in the light wind startled her out of her reverie. She sprang to her feet, ears pricked. In this mood, the Doctor's goggles made him look as blank and pitiless as a god passing judgment. "Karo Sair has no parents," he said grimly. "I checked his DNA against the Ataraxi genetic databases, even the ones for the outer planets. He isn't related to any other member of his species. His body is made up. Fabricated."

Even though she knew, consciously, that the Doctor's anger was not directed at her, Karait couldn't help but take half a step back. "I feel strange saying this around you, Doctor, but that's impossible."

"Impossible for technology of your time. Looks like we don't have a psychograft on our hands. I have a feeling it's something more dangerous." The Doctor's face was still and solemn.

"Can't we use the TARDIS to find it, whatever it is?" Karait shifted her weight anxiously from foot to foot to tail.

"It's not in his hostel room. I checked the records of all the hostels in the city to find where he was staying. That means it's either hidden and protected or he's carrying it around with him. Either way, I'd like to get some idea of what we're dealing with before we make our move." He folded his hands under his chin in thought.

"For the sake of privacy, we don't have cameras in the office or exam rooms, but there are security camera-bots in the corridors," said Karait. "You could get into the security system and have a look at him. If he's carrying this technology with him, maybe you'll get some clues from the footage. They take very high resolution video."

"Ooh, good one, Karait. Lead on." They set off at a brisk pace to the clinic, the wind tugging at Karait's checkered skirts and the Doctor's blue coat. The Doctor observed the austere streets of the old capital with interest. Once in a while, he would ask about the history of an imperial monument, or draw a comparison to architecture in an another city, but he spent most of the walk in appreciative silence.

The clinic was just outside the old capital, in a tall, white, needle-thin building of the graceful modern style. Karait swiped in the Doctor as her guest. Once inside, safe from the sun's glare, he pushed his goggles up into his hair, leaving his eyes unshielded. "All right, Doctor. We'll go to Heirodrannon's office and you can use my computer to infiltrate the network. Heirodrannon's at a meeting, so we shouldn't be interrupted, but I'll keep watch at the door just in case."

"I see that you're used to working with me," the Doctor laughed as they stepped onto the elevator.

In a swift lurch, it was on the 25th floor. The Doctor didn't blink. "And I see that you're used to high-speed elevator platforms," said Karait, laughing right back.

"I think they're fun," said the Doctor, following Karait to the office. "Though I remember one time I was on one of those with a gastromonth - can you imagine? With that gelatinous body? It was flat as a pancake by the end of the ride, poor thing. I had to roll it out the door and got my coat all sticky." Karait chuckled and opened the door to the office. She stood on the threshold looking outward, ears swiveling all about. The Doctor drew his sonic screwdriver from inside his coat and set to work at the computer.

Karait's ears were pricked, and her mouth was slightly open so her sensitive tongue could taste the air. She took it upon herself to be the Doctor's senses so he could focus entirely on his task. Still, checking through the security footage was taking a while, and she found her thoughts drifting despite herself.

She had never felt so personally endangered by her assistance of the Doctor as she did now. Anyone capable of procuring and smuggling advanced bioengineering equipment from one time period to another could probably kill Karait without difficulty. In the past, she had given the Doctor information and advice, but she had never faced hostile aliens directly. Did she have the nerve or the instinct for it? She had always thought of herself as someone much more useful in a library than a life-or-death struggle. How could her bravery hold a candle to the Doctor's? Could she be trusted when lives were in the balance? The Doctor didn't know her. No matter how much he assured her that she deserved his trust, he couldn't know for sure.

Her reflections were interrupted by the distant smell of a member of her species, soon followed by faint footsteps. Both impressions intensified. The person had to be coming closer. "Doctor," warned Karait. "I think someone's coming." No response. Even the sound of the sonic screwdriver had died. She wanted to turn around and check what he was doing, but she didn't dare cease her vigil. It was now clear from the smell that it was Heirodrannon approaching. "It's my boss, Doctor. You need to get off the computer, now." Silence. "Doctor?"

When Karait turned round, she saw the Doctor staring blankly at the computer screen, his face devoid of the passion and love of life that so distinguished his character. Karait joined him at the desk and plucked at his sleeve anxiously. His eyes, dark and still, were fixed on a freeze frame of Karo Sair taking off his coat. "Doctor, you need to turn it off. There's no time. What's wrong?"

The Doctor pointed at a small object hanging from the coat pocket on a chain. He said, brokenly, "He's wearing a fob watch."


	5. The Chase

Karait pushed the Doctor out of the way and shut down the computer. Her boss came in and opened the door to find Karait in her street clothes and an agitated alien. "What are you doing here, Mereisekarait?" said the surgeon, his tone chilly. "You're not on duty. Who is the human?"

"I left a few things in the desk, Heirodrannon, that's all. The human is a - a medical student, a transfer from the Royal University on Xuoluon Minor. We were, um, about to study for a test together when I remembered I was missing a couple of...ah, yes, some scribe-pens and a pocket charger. I hope you don't mind that I let myself in. We're about to leave in any case." With her ears down and her tail coiled demurely around her waist, Karait was the picture of innocence, though her hormones betrayed anxiety to Emmer senses. The Doctor's distress did not aid her case.

"The Royal University of Xuoluon Minor does not allow off-world transfers," sneered the aging cosmeticist. "Bringing this human into my office without my permission is an unacceptable security risk. He could have broken into confidential patient records." His ears were fully erect and quivering with suppressed rage. "You have proven yourself too irresponsible for this position. If you fail to remove your personal effects from my office within the halfday, I will report this incident to the Prince's Enforcers. I expect your resignation letter immediately."

Some corner of Karait's mind was panicking over losing her job, but this thought fled instantly when she looked at the Doctor. He was pale as wax, and his eyelids were trembling slightly. Karait couldn't look him in the eye. She gave her boss a curt nod, a mumbled promise to clear off her desk, then gently chivvied the Doctor out of the office. Neither of them spoke. Every little noise set the Doctor off. The gentle "ping" of the elevator as it reached the ground floor made him jump. When the receptionist at the front wished him a nice day, he twitched, the whites showing all the way around his irises. Finally, once they were outside, the Doctor put on his goggles and gritted his teeth, as if steeling himself for what was to come.

From one of his improbable pockets, the Doctor withdrew the flake from the TARDIS. He stroked it with his fingertip and began to hum the same way the TARDIS did on the inside. The flake responded, gently. The noise set Karait's hair on end. She suppressed the urge to cover her ears. The Doctor frowned at the piece of TARDIS. "She doesn't like you, Karait."

"I can tell," she said, not without bitterness.

The Doctor's tune changed, and the TARDIS resonated in harmony. Bile rose in Karait's throat. "There's no time to find out why," he muttered. "We have to find Karo Sair." He held the shiny white flake between his middle finger and thumb, stretched out his arm, and pivoted. About halfway through a full circle, the hum of the TARDIS deepened. The Doctor froze. "This way!" he cried, and set off running. Karait was close on his heels, though she had to run about twice as fast to keep up with his longer strides. The Doctor swept the flake around constantly and followed its deepening resonance towards a restaurant in the Old Capital that served interplanetary cuisine.

"This place is a favorite of humans," Karait told the Doctor. "The windows are tinted so they can take their goggles off, and they make good Terran-style salads, I hear." She had no idea how this knowledge was supposed to help him; it occurred to her that she might just be babbling. The Doctor frowned, but said nothing. He had the look of a man possessed, and his attitude was beginning to exasperate Karait. Why couldn't he stop to explain, just for a moment? She plucked at the sleeve of his coat. "Who is Karo Sair, really?" she demanded, her voice thin and brittle and ready to snap. "What's in that watch? Doctor - "

He had already burst into the restaurant. Karait followed. The humming of the TARDIS flake had reached a bone-quaking intensity. The Doctor stashed it in a pocket, but the coat did little to muffle the vibrations. Karait felt her teeth rattle with the TARDIS' resonance. The plates on the tables were clattering. The diners, mostly off-worlders, muttered in complaint as their drinks spilled over from their cups. The Doctor ignored them, approaching the large lavender form of a young Ataraxi, eating a Terran salad alone. With the Ataraxi in a kneeling position, he and the Doctor were of a height. The Doctor came well within the typical Ataraxi personal space, looked Karo Sair in his large, watery eyes, and said in Ataraxi, "Who are you?" In his rush, he had neglected to take off his goggles; they had an imposing effect. "By the way, 'Karo Sair' is the wrong answer."

"I don't know who I am," said the Ataraxi in the same gravelly language. "But I do know that I'm not Karo Sair. I also get the feeling that whoever I am, I'm not your friend." He leered at the Doctor with an entirely unchildlike aspect. By now, half the people in the restaurant were staring. The other half were doing their best to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

"Well, let's find out," said the Doctor. He took a thin metal rod from inside his coat and flicked it against the fob watch chain hanging out of Karo Sair's pocket. The chain and the watch stuck to it magnetically, and the Doctor swiped it away. Ignoring his protests, the Doctor opened the watch, taking care that its owner could not see what was inside. Karait drew closer to the Doctor to see what was inside. A golden glow shone within, and a distant voice that whispered, "Time Agent...con man...Time..."

All color drained from the Doctor's face. "No. It can't be," he said through clenched teeth. "There should be Reapers. Time is...oh, my poor sweetheart." He stroked the violently humming TARDIS flake through the lining of his coat. "No wonder you're so upset."

"Doctor, what's going on?" said Karait. Her pupils, usually thin slits, were dilated almost to roundness. Some of the blood vessels in her ears had burst from the TARDIS' noise, and the insides of her ears were flecked with blood. "What's a Time Agent? Who is Karo Sair?"

The Doctor grabbed Karait by the wrist. "We have to get out of here. I can't be near him. It isn't safe." He pulled the fob watch off the magnetic rod and tossed it back to its owner. "Keep this. I'm sorry about all this." He stashed the magnet in his coat and started dragging Karait toward the door.

Suddenly, they heard a snarl. "Not so fast. If this is what you're so scared of, I want to find out what's in here."

"No!" cried the Doctor, but it was too late. The fob watch was opened, and the golden light unleashed.


	6. The Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "That which is spoken by God is life;  
> That which is spoken by the devil is death.  
> But Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time."
> 
> "The burning one is Eros in his form as a flame. It shines and it devours."
> 
> \- Carl Jung, The Seven Sermons to the Dead

Screams filled the restaurant as the light suffused from his watch into his eyes. It engulfed his whole body, and he began to change shape; shrinking, screaming and gasping all the while. There were loud crashes as the shocked onlookers dropped their cups and utensils. When the golden glow faded, it left behind a human in a coat far too large for his lean frame. He was pale like the Doctor, but his hair was a lighter shade of brown, and his eyes clear brown instead of blue. He was muscular and handsome like the Doctor, and there was something similar in the way they carried themselves. His figure was lean and rangy, his face angular like a bird of prey. As soon as the shock of transformation was over, he hunched into a predatory stance. The sudden change did not seem to have thrown him off-balance at all. The people dining near him shifted their chairs away and avoided looking him in the eye.

Almost simultaneously, the two men glared at each other and said, "You!" Despite the TARDIS translation function, Karait could tell that they weren't speaking in any language she knew of.

"You are making a disturbance here, gentlemen!" the hostess cried, wringing her hands. "Please leave!"

The newly formed human's expression turned steely, his lips a thin hard line. He took a menacing step toward the hostess and balled his hands into fists. "Don't," warned the Doctor in the same language as before. To the hostess, he said tersely, "We're very sorry, madam. There'll be no more trouble." He took both Karait and the human firmly by their elbows and steered them out the door. Passersby stared at the mismatched trio and gave them a wide berth on the street.

"Abraxas," the human breathed, and just when Karait thought she couldn't get any more confused, he leaned in and kissed the Doctor with the kind of passion that was considered obscene in public places on Emmeras. The Doctor didn't kiss him back, but drew a blaster from the depths of his coat and held it to the man's chest.

The kiss broke. The Doctor grimaced, as if trying to get the other man's taste out of his mouth. "For your information, I don't go by Abraxas anymore. For _my_ information, how did you get Time Lord technology?" His words were hard-edged as flint.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Karait squeaked, but her voice was too faint and quavering to be heard over his loud demands.

The man at gunpoint was composed, even nonchalant, looking the Doctor in the eye instead of the weapon digging into his ribs. "Well, I don't go by Eros anymore, in case you were wondering. It is so cute, though, that you believe in bedtime stories. What did the girl call you? Doctor?" He smirked, and paused to choke back a laugh. "All right, then, _Doctor_, if you believe in Time Lords, then the box where I found the arch was a TARDIS. Right. An old, abandoned TARDIS left behind by a long-lost race of immortal time guardians, crumbling on some rock in the Kasterborous system. You'll like that, eh? I found an old, dimensionally transcendent box full of rubbish, and in the middle of all the rubbish was an arch that could overwrite my DNA. Convenient find for a man on the run from the Time Agency. Made by _Time Lords_, was it?" he sneered. "If it was Time Lord technology, then call that box of rubbish a TARDIS."

The Doctor was choking and spluttering, his face turning red with rage, so Karait talked instead. "But you didn't know how to use it properly, that arch. Your DNA wasn't overwritten quite right. You still had some of your personality. You missed being human." Both men stared at her. Words tumbled out of Karait in a torrent. "Didn't you notice, Doctor? He was drinking, in the restaurant, remember? Ataraxi can't drink. They're a desert species. They've evolved to the point where they never drink at all. That's why he went to a cosmeticist. We modified his digestive system so that he could drink." Karait shook her head in wonder. "Of all the things about being human to miss, it's _drinking_! I'd be more concerned with - "

The Doctor jabbed the other man with his blaster. "How did you get in the TARDIS? Where did you find it?" he snarled.

The man who used to be called Eros stared at him incredulously. "You really do believe it, don't you? The box was very pretty, I'll give you that, but it was no TARDIS. It was just about falling in. I huffed and I puffed and blew the box down." He grinned wolfishly. "Is that how the tale goes? Anyway, it was mostly rubbish inside, but then I found that arch. The girl's right; the technology was beyond my knowledge, but I know a useful device when I see one. I had a mechanic repair it and send me on my merry way into hiding." His lip curled condescendingly at the Doctor's muffled noises of outrage. "What, did I ruin your precious broken-down TARDIS? I'm so _terribly_ sorry."

"You _gutted_ the TARDIS' corpse. You're a grave robber. If she knew that scum like you were - " His voice broke, and he brought a finger to his lips and rubbed them softly, as if he were wiping dirt off them. Then his face contorted with shock. "You bastard! You have the fucking poison lip gloss on! I should have known!"

Smiling like a scavenger over a carcass, the ex-Time Agent bolted, but too late. The Doctor blasted him. As the man fell, he blew the Doctor a kiss. The gesture had no trace of mockery, just a twisted tenderness. His body gave a mighty twitch, and he fell still.

The Doctor's gun fell from nerveless fingers and shattered against the gravel. Karait gasped as her friend's knees buckled, and held out her arms to support him. His lips were blue, and his single pulse was weak and thready beneath her fingers. She stared at the blaster fragments on the ground. _The Doctor has double this man's heart_, she realized, _in more ways than one_. "You're not the Doctor, are you?" she whispered.

"No," he said, between convulsive coughs.

"I still don't want you to die," said Karait, half-sobbing.

He smiled. "I know." And with that, death came.


	7. Enlightenment

A crowd gathered on the street around the three of them. The sirens of the Prince's Enforcers grew louder. Karait didn't notice. Her mind blank and numb, she rocked her friend's body in her arms and sobbed without tears, shaking rhythmically and gasping.

Suddenly, there was another, louder gasp, and the corpse was no longer a corpse.

Karait yowled in surprise and leapt backward reflexively. The man crumpled to the ground, unsupported. "Ow," he winced as he got back on his feet. He looked around at the crowd and cleared his throat to address the onlookers. "Nothing to worry about. The man over there isn't dead. He's an old partner of mine who's just made some bad decisions." He made a gesture of jabbing a needle into his arm. The crowd murmured and began to dissipate. They assumed that he had overdosed on drugs, and drug addicts were the most despised members of Emmer society. No self-respecting Emmeran would be seen near one.

"You - were - dead," said Karait. She pronounced each syllable distinctly, with emphasis, as if sounding out words she had never heard before. She stared at him, trying to transfix him, pin him down to some idea of reality she could accept.

"I was," he said. "Now I'm not." He stroked the hair at the crown of her head and spoke slowly. "Merle, or Eros, or Captain John Hart, as he's sometimes called, isn't dead either. I had the blaster set to stun. It's probably best we leave him here for the Prince's Enforcers to handle. The less time he spends with me, the less damage to the timeline. He wasn't supposed to meet me between the con we did together on Rho Cancri B and that time in the bar on Earth." He turned around and started walking toward Grand Meadows, then sensed that Karait wasn't following him. He looked at her over his shoulder.

"Look, whoever you are, I trust you," said Karait, her tone a bit too even, betraying how much effort it cost her to keep her voice from wobbling. "You trusted me based on much less. I owe you the same courtesy. I just need to know your name."

"I've gone by many names, but the one the Doctor called me is Captain Jack Harkness," he said, the faintest promise of a smile flitting across his face.

"A friend of the Doctor's is a friend of mine, Captain Jack," said Karait, and joined him on the road to Grand Meadows.

Jack replied softly, "Do you see now why I trusted you?" They passed the rest of the walk in a silence that was tense yet natural, like a taut muscle waiting to spring. Karait saw the glint of silver past the low walls that seamed in the Grand Meadows, and the blue box silhouetted against the hedges as the sun sank and the moons rose red and orange in the sky. The fiery moonlight dappled their silver leaves with gold.

The smooth white rock near the TARDIS had a patina of red-orange, mottled with shadows by the leaves of the skinny needle-trees around it. They sat on the rock next to each other, without their bodies touching. The sun's rays were now dim enough so that Jack could remove his goggles. The moons reflected strangely in his eyes, like blue velvet on fire. "How long did you know the Doctor?" said Karait, breaking the silence.

Jack didn't look her in the eye. He stared at the TARDIS. "6000 years, give or take."

Karait stared at him and felt nothing but pity. The enormity of what he had said swallowed her fledgling thoughts. Her first impulse was to splutter, So you'll never die, ever? but she held her tongue, sensing that it was exactly the wrong thing to say. Instead, she said, "And you loved him for all that time."

"You never forget, no matter how many millennia pass. The places where I've lived are a blur. The jobs I've had seem to bleed into each other. But - " He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. "When I come back from death, it's the first thing I remember. All the people I've loved. It's how I know I'm alive again."

"Is there any love there? On the other side?" asked Karait, the slightest of tremors entering her voice.

"There's nothing." Jack pulled back, and stared off into the sky again. "This isn't the first time I've worn a dead man's name, but this is different. Do you understand why I had to do this, Karait?" He swallowed hard. Karait could almost feel the thickness in his throat herself. "There was a man who loved the Doctor so much that he was willing to tear apart the universe for him, and almost did. He once said, 'A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about.' Or so I've heard."

Karait stared at the ground and scuffed at it with her foot. Her world seemed so small next to a man older than her clan and all its ancestors, a man who had tasted death a thousand times. Tears streamed silently down her face and pooled in her lap. Jack reached out and wiped her tears away from her cheeks with his thumb. "What's wrong?"

Jack resisted Karait's attempts to dodge his gentle fingers that dried her face. "If I told you, you'd kill me," she said, very quietly.

"I used to kill people all the time, without remorse. I've been killing for millennia." As he spoke, his age became startlingly apparent on his face. The spidery-thin lines on his face deepened into ravines in the dimness of twilight. "I haven't killed anyone since I became the Doctor. Being the Doctor makes everything different."

Karait slumped a little, her spine curving almost imperceptibly in the darkness. Jack let his hand fall away from her face. "It's my fault," she said, with dead flatness.

"You can't blame yourself for this, Karait," said Jack, low and urgent. "None of it - "

His words were cut off when Karait seized him by the collar and brought his face so close to hers that he could feel the spit fly as she screamed, "It's my fault he's dead!"


	8. Ghost Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "My life closed twice before its close;  
> It yet remains to see  
> If Immortality unveil  
> A third event to me,  
> So huge, so hopeless to conceive,  
> As these that twice befell.  
> Parting is all we know of heaven,  
> And all we need of hell."
> 
> \- Emily Dickinson

Jack cried out and clutched his chest, where Karait knew the human heart to be.

For a terrible moment, she thought he was about to die again, until he flicked the TARDIS flake out of his coat, recoiling from it as if it were a hot coal. It hummed at a pitch too high for human ears to hear, at a frequency that gave Karait a terrible headache. Instead of slowing down, Karait accepted this as her due punishment from the TARDIS and continued. "See? I'm not just making this up, or blaming myself for something that isn't my fault. She knows what I've done, and she hates me for it. I didn't realize that she knew until you invited me in. That humming - she was humming her rage. I couldn't stay in there for a moment longer." She couldn't look at the TARDIS. It was as if the timeship were watching her in judgment and had found her wanting. She tried to address Jack instead, but that was worse. His face was haunted and hollow, echoing with six millennia's worth of ghosts.

"His companion, Albaskos, was dying of Cancrian wasting sickness. It slowly returns each cell in the body to the stem cell state, which means it can't do its job anymore. All the organs slowly lose function, bit by bit. When it starts attacking the skin and face, it's... well, I'm a medical student, and that's the only image I've ever seen that made me faint." Her throat worked, choking back a gag reflex. "It's a terrible disease with no known treatment - not in this century, anyway."

"But the Doctor was stranded. The TARDIS had been stolen, so he couldn't travel to a time or place that had the cure. So he came to me. He had trusted me with medical matters countless times. He was counting on me to come through." Karait stared at the ground as she spoke. "I found one way he could save her. I had to come up with a way. He loved Alba so much. She was a human he rescued from the slave pits of Geryon, where she was forced to fight other slaves for sport. She repaid him for her freedom a thousand times over. They trusted each other as much as any two people can." Her eyes widened, as if illuminated by the glow of the memory. "Their friendship was a beautiful thing to see."

"I built a machine that would connect his organ systems to hers, and carry out all the metabolic processes her body was too weak to do. Maybe it's ironic that the machine was a work of genius, by far the most brilliant thing I've ever done. I had to adapt the equipment to connect a binary vascular system to an open circulatory system. I thought it couldn't be done until I did it." At this juncture, Karait felt her throat collapse in on itself. She couldn't force out the next few words.

Then she felt her slim, cool hands enveloped by Jack's large, hot ones. "Just say it," he said tenderly. "The more you wait, the harder it gets." The lines of his face were full of knowledge. He had heard worse, Karait was suddenly certain. He had been responsible for worse.

"There was just one flaw," Karait croaked. "The set-up would kill him. It would save Alba, but kill him. I knew that. I knew he was out of regenerations. I _knew_." Her hands trembled between Jack's. "But I didn't tell him. I was sending him to his death, Jack, and I didn't say a word. I just - I didn't want Alba to die, and I - I was afraid - " With a shudder, she crumpled into Jack's arms and spoke no more.

"He would have done it anyway," Jack whispered, his posture unwavering despite Karait's weight. "Even if you had told him, he wouldn't even have given it a second thought." They passed an interminable time in silence. The red moon reached its zenith and began to sink, while the orange moon rose still higher. Nocturnal insects emerged, their lacy wings ablaze with moonlight. Their monotonous buzz filled Karait's mind and drowned out all thought. Jack's body was warm as a furnace in the cool of the night, and she didn't want to let go.

A huge, many-winged insect landed on Karait's ear, startling her from stillness. Jack flicked it off and helped her to an upright position. "I saw his TARDIS die," he said flatly. Karait felt herself flinch, as if from a distance.

"I got a message from him via psychic paper that she'd been stolen, and I was about to fly her back. She was so worried about both of them. When he died, I _felt_ it. A great bell rang, and all the lights turned mauve. I could feel her shatter all around me as she sang her last song. She sang even as her voice splintered along with everything else. For a moment it felt as if the whole universe were broken too." Unconsciously, he had raised his hands to his ears, as if trying to block out the sound. His voice went flat again. "Nothing has ever made me long to die so much."

"If you could die right now, this second," pronounced Karait slowly, "would you?" She still leaned against him, but her spine was unbowed, and her tears dried on her cheeks.

The silence before his response was uncomfortably long. Karait found herself squeezing his hand to elicit a response. "No." Jack shook his head for emphasis, as if the word itself weren't convincing enough. (Who was he convincing? Karait? Himself?) "I think the universe needs a Doctor." He nudged her gently until she was sitting entirely unsupported. He strode over to his TARDIS, unlocked the door, and turned back toward Karait. "Come with me, Karait. I can teach her to forgive you." His smile was a glorious promise.

A line of silver-white light spilled out from the slightly ajar TARDIS, illuminating each blade of grass in painful starkness. It seemed as if the grass would tear Karait's feet to shreds if she dared tread upon it. She let the silver-white light fill her eyes until her pupils narrowed to the thinnest of slits. On the other side of that door lay the universe. She lurched forward, just a hair, then caught herself. She hung her head, unable to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry, Captain Jack. I can't."

The smile slid off his face like water from a stone. "It isn't your fault, Karait. The Doctor needed you." His expression softened. "I still have to find the Chameleon Arch."

When Karait showed no sign of changing her mind, Jack swallowed hard and fidgeted with the TARDIS key in his hand. "I need you," he said.

"In my clan, we believe in shirigot, Captain. Penance. When one of us commits a cardinal sin, we must dedicate the rest of our lives to _shirigot_, because the sin follows you to your death, and only _shirigot_ can ward it away from your soul. I can never lie to a patient again. My patients, if they must die, will die with the dignity I denied the Doctor. He faced his doom without ever knowing it." Her gaze was full of sadness. "I imagine that your sins are far worse than mine, but you have the rest of time for _shirigot_. I have to make do with the years that remain to me."

"If I ever need a doctor, I'll come back to you," said Jack. "I promise, Karait."

She stood and approached Jack, avoiding the pale slice of light from the TARDIS. She kissed him chastely in the Emmeran fashion, right between his eyes. "And if I should need a Doctor, I'll call." A smile flickered across her face. "In my language, there are two words for goodbye: _aikos_, which means goodbye forever, and _eisen_, which means goodbye for now. So I say to you now, Doctor: _eisen_."

He kissed her back, completing the ritual, then opened the TARDIS door a little wider. Karait took a step backward, retreating into the darkness. Jack shut the door. The sound of it appeared to him like the closing of a heavy book, the thudding of its covers. He took the goggles off his head and hung them from a hook that jutted from the console. He entered the dematerialization sequence. The sounds of the universe rasped and whirred from the time rotor. Jack sat down in the jump seat, still holding on to one of the levers. He tilted his head up, caressing the lever like an outstretched arm, and spoke to the TARDIS, as if in prayer.

"Sing to me, darlin'."


End file.
